The Occam Theory of Translation

A Letter from Translatological Editor
Trent Slater

Speculative Grammarian is renowned for its openness to new theories (except my theory that all Indo-European languages descend from Esperanto). It therefore makes infinite sense to use this page to expound the newest and yet best supported translation theory.

After forcing our interns to read all the world’s great translation theories (and allowing them adequate recovery time and hospital care), a deep learning model was built from their notes and the semi-coherent noises they made while they emerged from unconsciousness.

Compared with the results of those funny linear algebra things that most deep learning people use, we found that applying Occam’s Razor to the resulting data provided the best result. It also had the added benefit of meaning that none of us had to learn linear algebra!

Once the interns recovered, they were presented with the Occam Theory of Translation and agreed in return for more holidays​ that it explained all theories in translation.

The theory goes like this:

Translation is hard,

But often overlooked,

If I pretend I understand it,

They’ll pay me to write a book.

As you can see, that pretty much summarises all translation theory and is the simplest possible explanation of everything ever written about it. After all, if we realise that “pretending to know stuff” leads to “theories” which leads to “books” and lecture tours to nice countries, we can suddenly explain why people would hide themselves in a library reading 17th century French metafiction translated into heptametric Dothraki poetry.

It’s either that or people genuinely find all that stuff interesting. But that sounds a bit complicated for us.